A copycat lost in translation

Un imitateur perdu dans la traduction.



If a blog in English is entertaining, so it stands to reason that a blog in any language would be entertaining. I've come across many, especially ones written in French that have caught my fancy.

I can read them. Get the gist of them. Sometimes get confused by them. Always enjoy the pictures. My biggest fear when reading a foreign language, even one I am fairly proficient at understanding, is "misunderstanding", and therefore commenting wrong.

My second fear is not only commenting wrong, but being misunderstood myself due to my inability to communicate understandably. I'm sure that I would botch things up terribly if I trusted my own response.

So I was thrilled to come across Google translator. It has been my life savor. If I'm not sure of something, I paste it into there. If I have something to say, I paste it into there, re-forming sentences until no "English" words come out that wouldn't be English anyway in the French language. (Each language structures their sentences differently and does or does not use the same phrases or words to mean the same type of thing, so a good play around is sometimes in order to get it correct. However as JamaGenie said, at least you get close enough. My point with re-forming is clearer in the next paragraph.)

How do I know it works? Because first of all, I put in what I do know the correct translation of, and it spits out the proper response. (I re-form what I have to to get it exact). Unlike Babel Fish, which despite its popularity, and the ability for one to put in a whole paragraph or paragraphs for translation as opposed to the one sentence or phrase capabilities of Google translator, it really doesn't cut the mustard, quite frankly, despite re-formation.

I also know it works because when I do put in my comment on whatever blog I'm using the translator for, I actually get a response back, and low and behold, I must have responded correctly, because they were pleased on more than one occasion.

Some websites, you've probably noticed, have a page or site translator widget attached to them. This makes my having to have another window open for copy/paste translation a much easier thing to have to go through. But there is one translator in particular that I am most keen on. That is the Google Translator widget. The original. The one that come directly from Google with no middle man. I wish all websites would have a lovely google translator on their pages, one like that of the great JamaGenie (whose blog, incidentally, you can click into right from this page towards the bottom, her latest for all to see and click into, so please do.

I was very excited to see it on her blog. So excited, in fact that I had to try once again to install one onto mine. Now, I know her blog is in English, that is not the point. The point is, she has one. So now anyone in the world could view it and enjoy it. I wanted the same. So, I'm a copy cat of sorts, on more than one count but I'll get to that shortly. At any rate, I must say that I feel especially inept at the fact that I didn't figure out how to install this widget direct from the source, preciously. In fact I feel downright retarded.

You see, I've tried before, to get one of those nifty translators in, but to no avail. Well, I'm here to tell you that I finally persevered. And I believe it's because she had the very right one. There is more than one web page translator, you know. Hers is the bees knees. It is from THE Google translator. So check it out, and play around with it. (I did! teehee). Mine is located at the top of the sidebar to the right there. The one issue I have, is that the "follow me" widget will not show up properly and instead shows that there is... an issue. So if the foreigner wants to follow you, they have to know that they have to do it in the site's language. Sucky. Of course there is always the rss feed, but I do enjoy seeing people's faces.

So special thanks to JamaGenie for allowing me my copy cat.

So how am on a copy cat on more than one count?



Well, one day, I strolled over to JamaGenie's blog and noticed a beautiful site (note the play on words). It was a new layout. Beautiful. Cozy. Special looking. It was from "The Cutest Blog on the Block" Well, after seeing this, I had to take a stroll over there to see what I could get my hands on. Unfortunately my favorites didn't come out right, and others had had the same problem with them not taking up the full space they were suppose to. However, if it weren't for the great JamaGenie, I would not have the cute blog background that I do today (my second one from "The Cutest Blog on the Bock"(you can check them out by clicking on their emblem on the top left corner of the page here or by looking them up, of course), I do tend to enjoy changes, you know - keeps me on my toes.

Now JamaGenie has a very sweet vintage looking blog background from Shabbyblogs.com, which I'll have to take a peak at, though I'm pretty sure no changes for a while here again, folks. (Should I eat my words now?)

Anyway, thank you JamaGenie, author and publisher of the wonderful blog Saturday's Child, for the inpiration to be a sort of copycat. My great appreciation for your lovely taste.